


Make Answer to the Clock

by Trobadora



Category: Christabel - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Genre: F/F, Misses Clause Challenge, References to La Belle Dame sans Merci (Keats)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-18
Updated: 2015-12-18
Packaged: 2018-05-07 11:17:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5454668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trobadora/pseuds/Trobadora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What can ail thee, Christabel, alone and palely loitering?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make Answer to the Clock

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lyryk (s_k)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/s_k/gifts).



> This is not the story I intended to write when I got my assignment. It's also not the story I thought I was writing, as late as a week before the deadline. Instead, since you talked about Keats in your letter, this is _Christabel_ via _La Belle Dame sans Merci_ , and I hope it's a much better story. In the words of the poet himself, "I must be content therefore with assuring the friendly Reader, that the less (s)he attributes its appearance to the Author's will, choice, or judgment, the nearer to the truth (s)he will be." :)
> 
> Many thanks to C, K, and M for their help!

  
  


* * *

  
  


**What Can Ail Thee**

Whenever the castle clock strikes midnight, Christabel flinches.

Whenever she passes the threshold - not alone, never alone - she shudders. Her father holds out his arm to her, thoughtlessly, or the Bard braces her, pity in his eyes.

Pale and stricken, she wanders the hall, feeling like a withered echo of herself.

The mastiff has taken to howling whenever she passes.

The castle, joyless before, has grown dreary. No birds sing in Langdale Hall. Neither the nightingale nor the lark will grace it with their voice.

Christabel lies down in her bed and pulls the covers up, up, hands clenching into the fabric, eyes squeezed shut. 

When morning comes, it is no relief. 

_Each matin bell knells us back to a world of death,_ her father always says, has said since her mother's death those many years ago. Christabel is beginning to understand the truth of it.

~*~

It's the middle of the night by the castle clock.

The wind howls outside Christabel's window as she counts down the hours, growing more awake with every bell. Clouds, fast-driven by the wind, race across the sky and shroud the moonlight, diffusing it into a pale glow until they move on and are gone, and bright moonbeams spear through the window again like a lantern. 

The moon did not reach her chambers that night. But then, her chambers were not empty that night.

The moon will not let her sleep. Christabel's eyes are wide open.

Until the matin bell knells her back to a world of death.

~*~

The clock strikes midnight.

The clock strikes midnight.

The clock strikes midnight.

  
  


* * *

  
  


**I Met A Lady**

The bell rings out, pure and clear, as the clock strikes midnight.

She cannot sleep. She can never sleep. It's enough to forget dire visions of the darkest wrongs, a lady's bosom and a serpent's eyes, to remember only the sweetness even of fevered dreams.

Woken fresh from a vision never seen before, she'd known her sin. "Send this woman away," she'd pleaded, "send her far from my sight." But Geraldine's eyes are still on her, unseen, dark with malice.

Dark with anger, at the one who carried her over her threshold and offered her shelter and, in the morning, could not face the look of her.

Christabel sits up abruptly, throwing back her covers. She tiptoes to the window. Nothing in sight but the castle's own walls, and the sky above with the moon and the clouds and the stars behind. She shivers.

On tiptoes to the door: she won't wear shoes because she doesn't mean to leave the rugs warming the floor beside her bed. She won't bring a cloak because she doesn't mean to step outside.

Barefoot, in her white shift and nothing else, she shivers across the courtyard like a ghost. The door opens quietly for her, the hinges well-oiled. Over the bridge and across the meadow beside the road, to the old oak tree where ... where ...

Even now, her throat catches on the words she would speak. Even now, her thoughts stutter into into shivered fragments of _this_ , _this_ , as soon as she thinks of it.

She knows. But there are no words.

Under the cold light of the moon, Christabel shivers. In the wind and the chill, she kneels, and nothing happens.

The matin bell knells her back to a world of death.

~*~

The clock strikes midnight.

The moon is full and bright, and Christabel kneels. The tree is large and tall and throws deep shadow beneath. She tries to find words for her prayers, words that came easily that night, before Geraldine. Before everything. _Before_.

Who is she praying for, other than her own fevered soul?

Her heart beating in her throat, she moves around the tree, all around it, from its moonlit side to the dark and back, remembering - _her beauty in the moonlight, the sweetness of her voice, her hand in Christabel's ..._

But there is only the grass, withered and dry, and the ground and the tree itself, winter-bare. She is alone.

She wants to curl in the shadows of the tree and sink into the earth. But it's in the moonlight that she stumbles, that she falls to the ground and sobs, grief for what her heart knows but her mind cannot name. Torn from her, something she cannot seek, something beyond understanding. 

Something Geraldine took, or something Christabel sent away, she doesn't know. She only knows it's lost to her.

The curls of her hair fall into her face, and she doesn't brush them back. Hot tears run down her cheek, and she feels her pale cheeks flush. She lies, curled into the dirt, no name for the serpent wrapped around her chest, wringing out her heart.

  
  


* * *

  
  


**And There I Dreamed**

It's the middle of the night by the castle clock, heard faintly in the distance. If castle clock it is and not just the ringing of sweet hope and the craving for respite in Christabel's fevered head. She has not the strength to rise from where she is fallen, taken from home and safety and lost in the night.

From the deep midnight shadow of the tree, the moonbeams are almost too bright. In their halo, suddenly, a maiden is kneeling, shining in the brightness of the night, head demurely bowed and hands folded in prayer.

Christabel's eyes latch on to the maiden. She cannot cry out, but her pitiful moans are heard.

The maiden's arms lift her up. "Come," says Geraldine. "My father's hall is not far from here, and you will be safe in its shelter."

Christabel cannot speak.

The fair lady leads her to the gates. It is Langdale Hall, Christabel's own home. She stops at the threshold, her heart clenched. Her fingers tremble as they touch the wood and iron of the gate. She falls to her knees.

Geraldine lifts her like a child in her arms and carries her. She leads her into Christabel's own chambers. "Come, lady," she says. "I will share my bed with you tonight, and tomorrow my father will hear your story, and the ways you were wronged."

"You," says Christabel. "You." That is all she can say.

Geraldine's hand caresses the side of her face. "Fear not the ghosts of another life," says the lady, "fear not the memories of what was. Lie in my bed, fair maiden, and be safe tonight."

Christabel shivers as she sways into Geraldine's arms. 

The lady's caresses are gentle, divesting Christabel of her shift dirtied by her rest on the bare winter ground. Her nimble fingers tease tangles from Christabel's hair, pull away pieces of dried leaves. Her hand strokes slowly down from her shoulder over her arm, and again from her neck over her breast.

Geraldine smiles, the skin around her dark eyes and her pale lips crinkling. Christabel cannot look away from her eyes. The serpent is there behind it, unseen - it must be. But it won't reveal itself, no matter how intently Christabel looks.

Then Geraldine pulls her own gown away. She leans forward, brushing a kiss against Christabel's forehead. Her hands close lightly on Christabel's shoulders. 

"In the touch of our breasts now works a spell," she murmurs against Christabel's lips, and the dark undertones of her voice are a promise, a thrum on Christabel's skin, and something in her breast knows what Geraldine is saying even if she cannot fathom the meaning of her words, "which shall bind us together, Christabel."

Christabel looks down at herself, and gasps. 

"It is sealed between us now," Geraldine whispers into her ear.

Marked, connected, bound. Christabel's heart beats faster, and Geraldine's heart beats with her.

Geraldine's fingers shiver over her.

"You needn't fear," she says again. "Lonely maiden, motherless, fatherless, you yet have a protector here. But never again need you fear the night, for you are of it now, and need never come into the day again. When the clock strikes midnight will you live. And I will be here."

 _And I will be here,_ Christabel's heart echoes.

~*~

Until the matin bell knells her back to a world of death.

  
  


* * *

  
  


**And I Awoke**

Whenever the castle clock strikes, Christabel flinches.

No birds sing in Langdale Hall, but the clock strikes, for the quarters, for the hour, unrelenting.

Pale and stricken, Christabel wanders the hall, sins unknown weighing heavy on her soul. Her father's distant courtesy, the mastiff's howl, the bard's dire prophecies, they fill the space of her day.

At night, Christabel lies down in her bed and waits. 

She waits for the stroke of midnight, her only relief.

~*~

Each matin bell

Each matin bell

Each matin bell knells us back to a world of death.


End file.
